Voice actuated computing systems are gradually making their way into modern life. Initially, these systems were often found in telephone menu paradigms, but it has been increasingly common so see voice actuation of other systems, and the format particularly makes sense in areas where a person cannot interact with a keyboard. One such area is that of control of automotive computing systems, such as, but not limited to, infotainment systems.
One complaint users of such systems may have, is that the systems typically do not respond well to “conversational” dialogue. A four year old may understand a conversational sentence better than a computing system that cost millions of dollars to develop. This is because these systems often operate off of keywords, and further because the systems often have little to no sense of context. People, on the other hand, may prefer to speak in subjective terms, as opposed to dialogue consisting of a string of spoken, often objective, commands (e.g., without limitation “set volume to level 3”). Instead of an explicit volume level, a vehicle occupant may prefer, for example, to say “turn up the volume slightly.” “Slightly,” however, is a subjective command, having different meaning for different people. It also may mean different things to the same person, depending on a current volume setting.
Attempts have been made to get voice-commanded systems to understand subjective and conversational dialogue, but plenty of room for improvement remains in this area.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,949,529, generally discusses a mobile system that includes speech-based and non-speech-based interfaces for telematics applications. The mobile system identifies and uses context, prior information, domain knowledge, and user specific profile data to achieve a natural environment for users that submit requests and/or commands in multiple domains. The invention creates, stores and uses extensive personal profile information for each user, thereby improving the reliability of determining the context and presenting the expected results for a particular question or command. The invention may organize domain specific behavior and information into agents, that are distributable or updateable over a wide area network.
U.S. Patent Publication 2011/0131045 discusses systems and methods for receiving speech and non-speech communications of natural language questions and/or commands, transcribing the speech and non-speech communications to textual messages, and executing the questions and/or commands. The application applies context, prior information, domain knowledge, and user specific profile data to achieve a natural environment for one or more users presenting questions or commands across multiple domains. The systems and methods create, store and use extensive personal profile information for each user, thereby improving the reliability of determining the context of the speech and non-speech communications and presenting the expected results for a particular question or command.
U.S. Patent Publication 2011/0055186 discusses a method and system for personalizing information retrieval in a communication network. The method comprising receiving one or more inputs from a plurality of sources, processing information present in the one or more inputs received from the plurality of sources, performing a contextual and personalized search based on the inputs received and displaying one or more results in support of the information in the communication network. The system herein comprising an application server for receiving one or more inputs from a plurality of sources, a processor for performing at least one of processing an information present in the inputs received from the plurality of sources, generating one or more virtual documents based on the processing of the information present in the one or more inputs, performing a search based on the virtual documents generated and a display unit for displaying one or more results.